Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed visceral cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death for men in the United States. The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2013 about 238,590 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed and 29,720 men will die of the disease. Overall, one in six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime.
Currently, prostate cancer can be detected by either digital rectal exam (DRE) or by the measurement of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in the blood of patients. However, neither test is entirely conclusive, and both can lead to false negatives (leaving real cancers undetected), and false positives (signaling cancer where there is none). For example, standard PSA tests conducted at the recommended 4.0 ng/ml cutoff, are 86% sensitive to cancer patients but only 33% specific, producing false positives in roughly 67% of non-cancer patients (Hoffman et al. 2002). False positives are usually followed by invasive and painful biopsies.
A need exists for prostate cancer diagnostic tests with improved accuracy and/or sensitivity.